Over the past year, our Engineering and Product teams have been busy working to improve our photo books editor experience (and we think you’ll love it!). You may have noticed the overall speed of our editor is faster, and we’ve given customers expanded flexibility with their designs—but we’re excited to introduce some other special features that will make building your book easier than ever.

Getting started on a new book project can be slightly overwhelming—we all have so many images we love that we want to make it into our project. Or maybe you can’t choose just one shot from a special family trip or milestone moment from the past year. With over 20 new layouts that prioritize more photos for each page, you don’t have to choose just one or two images to highlight a moment. Whether you’re looking for a layout you’ve never seen before or you just want more space for your photos, our new options take the guesswork out of having to pick just one image.

Once you’ve chosen one of our new layouts, you can easily drag and resize images, add text wherever you’d like, and align all the images to bring your vision to life. Want to add a caption to your photo? Create a text box and use our new alignment tool to center your text under each image. Want to adjust one of our layouts to highlight a certain photo? Simply drag and resize images to your desired height and width for the perfect page. We have also decoupled images and text boxes to give you more freedom to design your book just the way you want.

Curious if your book feels cohesive? This is a question we’ve gotten a lot, especially for customers who want more page management capabilities to adjust individual pages in their project rather than entire spreads. That’s why we’ve added the “Manage Pages” view in the top navigation, so you can see all your spreads laid out together in one place and adjust single pages for the perfect layout.

Picture this: You’re building your annual album, and you can’t find that one snapshot of the kids frosting cookies with grandma. You realize you forgot to add it to your photo gallery. We’ve got you covered. Seamlessly switch between different galleries within your project to find your photos faster and easier.

No one knows the ins and outs of our editor better than the team who built it. So we went straight to the source to ask our product developers for their best tips and tricks on how to get started. Here’s what they shared:

How do you decide which type of photo book or design is best suited for different occasions (e.g., weddings, vacations, family albums)?

“When I'm deciding which book to choose, I always think about the amount of photos I have from the occasion. For my yearly family books, I know I have a ton of photos that I want to be able to capture in print so I immediately go towards a Hardcover option because of the amount of pages it can hold. For our professional family photos we get every year, I usually like to build them into a Layflat Album since I know I want to use full-spread layouts to display each family photo as large as possible.”

Melissa M., Senior Physical Product Manager

What advice would you give to someone creating their first book this holiday season?

“Use autofill! We have a really great Autofill tool to get you started, and then you can personalize your book from there.”

Hannah F., Senior Product Designer - Site Experience & Editor

“Pre-curate your photos ahead of time to make building your project easier. I edit my photos and narrow down my selections ahead of uploading into the editor gallery. This streamlines the process so I can upload my images and know that each one is one I want to use for my project.”

Eliza F., Senior Product Manager - Editor